CONVERGENCE IN THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Meno

CONVERGENCE IN THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Meno: And how you inquire, Socrates, into that which you know
not? What will you put forward as the subject of inquiry? And if
you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is what
you did not know?
Socrates: I know, Meno, what you mean; but just see what a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue that a man cannot
inquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he
does not know; for he knows, and therefore has no need to inquire
about that—nor about that which he does not know, for he does not
know that about which he is to inquire.
Meno: Well, Socrates, is not the argument sound?
Socrates: I think not.
Meno: Why not?
Socrates: I will tell you why. I have heard from certain wise men
and women who spoke of things divine t h a t . . . the soul of man is
immortal... and having seen all things that are . . . has knowledge
of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to
remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue and about everything; . . . for all inquiry and all learning is but recollection.
Meno indeed introduced a tiresome dispute! The subsequent history of philosophy is replete with epistemological theories purporting
to account for the experience of questioning. The religious rationale,
proffered by Plato's Socrates—that "transhistorical remembrance"
which illuminates the human mind in its quest for truth—has never lost
its attraction. There have always been philosophers with theological
proclivities who have held that we inquire because we already know the
answer, that questions are heuristic catalysts.
Theologians—"those who speak of things divine"—in large part still
concur with Plato's account of inquiry. For theology is by definition
1
Plato, "Meno," in Collected Works of Plato, trans, by B. Jowett (New
York: Greystone Press), pp. 304-5.
283
284
Convergence in Theological Anthropology
inquiry into the unknown: the Unknown who although the Incomprehensible and the Ineffable yet somehow becomes the object of our
knowing and our speaking. In recognition of this paradox the Christian
Greeks were apophatic in their theology even as they greeted Christ as
the fulfillment of their philosophical quest. In the more cataphatically
inclined West, Augustine rejected any radical self-sufficiency of the
human mind and translated the Platonic theme of recollection into his
notion of divine illumination. And despite its tendency to highlight the
transcendence or hiddenness of God, later Western theology never
totally lost the ferment of this form of Augustinian immanentism.2
The purpose of this paper is to show a convergence in Protestant
and Catholic anthropology. It seems to me that a fundamental convergence exists precisely on the point of Socrates' reply to Meno. Divergence remains, of course, but perhaps this is a matter more of complementarity than of disagreement. After all, we are dealing with a
paradox!
PROTESTANT THEOLOGY: THE QUESTION IS "IGNORANCE"
In his essay, "The Question of God," 3 Wolfhart Pannenberg discusses the more or less negative evaluation of the modern anthropological path to knowledge of God in three major Protestant theologians of
our century, Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich. True to the ethos of the
Reformation, they suspect any form of natural theology (with either
nature or man as the point of departure for knowledge of God) as
noetic semi-Pelagianism which constructs idols and obstructs the true
knowledge of the divine. These idols of human inferiority have furthered the apotheosis of man which in our time has proven itself so
destructive of man.
The Neo-Orthodox sobriquet is almost synonymous with the theology of Karl Barth. His iconoclastic reaction to the modern world's (and
2
Cf. Eugene TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (New York: Herder &
Herder, 1970), pp. 103-7. It is interesting to note that TeSelle finds Augustinian
illuminationism alive today in the transcendental philosophies of Rahner and
Lonergan.
3
Wolfhart Pannenberg, "The Question of God," in Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp. 201-33.
285 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
modern Protestant theology's) self-confident spanning of the "immense
gulf between the human and the divine
caused him to champion
transcendent theocentrism in his theology of God's Word as judgment
on man's pride. But, as Pannenberg interestingly points out, even
Barth does not overlook the human "question." In no way a "point of
contact" with God, the human question exists only as a consequence of
the answer of the divine initiative. Later, in his mellower days, after he
felt assured that his caveat against modern anthropocentrism had been
heard, Barth sanctioned a nuanced anthropocentrism, a Christian "way
from below"—provided that it be understood as "an attempt to formulate a theology of the third article of the Apostles' Creed, the Holy
Spirit."6 But here again he made his point: " . . . respectable dogmatics
(is) good apologetics."7
Like Barth, Bultmann restricts the answer to Christian revelation,
but he sees even the "natural man" as aware of the questionableness of
his existence. Thus man as such forms the idea of God as an echo to
God's primordial initiative in calling man into question. But this idea of
God remains only a negative knowledge, an initial inquiry. In reality it
is "only a man's knowledge about himself—his limitations, his finitude,
his nothingness." Man, however, contorts this negative knowledge into
a positive knowledge—"he hypostatizes in an omnipotence the need he
has of omnipotence."
For Tillich the universal condition of finitude finds expression in
man's question. As Pannenberg observes,11 Tillich's method of correlaThis phrase is derived from Ernst Troeltsch's study of the self-confident
modern spirit; cf. his Protestantism and Progress (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966),
p. 23.
s
Pannenberg, "The Question of God," p. 208.
6
Karl Barth, "Evangelical Theology in the 19th Century," in The
Humanity of God (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1970), p. 25.
1
Ibid„ p. 20.
o
Cf. Pannenberg, "The Question of God," p. 211.
9
Andre' Malet, The Thought of Rudolf Bultmann (Garden City: Doubleday
& Co. Inc., 1971), p. 89.
10
Ibid., p. 89.
11
"The Question of God," p. 212.
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Convergence in Theological Anthropology
ting the revelatory answer with the question of human existence includes the questionableness of everything that exists whatsoever. While
he, too, maintains that the answer cannot be deduced from the question, Tillich requires that the articulation of the question be independent of the revelatory answer. Indeed, the divine answer proves its efficacy precisely in relation to the creative human interpretations of
reality of every age and in every culture wherein the question is posed
anew. To the extent, however, that it is the task of the theologian to
formulate the question, the question is dependent on the revelatory
answer.
But Tillich does go beyond Barth and Bultmann in his evaluation
of the connection between the human question and its revelatory
answer when he avers that God is the presupposition of the question of
God. Tillich presents the ontological type of the philosophy of religion
as an invitation to man to discover "himself when he discovers God; he
discovers something that is identical with himself although it transcends
him infinitely
" 1 2 Herein Tillich is at one with Augustine and the
Christian mystical tradition in recognition of the universal divine immanence. 13
Despite their differences, however, the Protestant theologians discussed by Pannenberg share a marked tendency to attenuate the connection between the human and the divine. Their Christologies understand the divine as revealed through the human in a negative sense:
The life of Jesus was not an exemplification of any human possibility except that of death, and in dying Jesus made it clear that God
had said "No!" to all the possibilities in this world.
God signifies the total abolition of man. 1 5
12
Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (London: Oxford University Press,
1969), p. 10.
13
The immanence of God as the Ground of Being is central to Tillich's
philosophical theology. His understanding of all religions as "based on revelation"
is developed in the third volume of his Systematic Theology.
14
Daniel Fuller, Easter Faith and History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965),
p. 82 (on Barth).
ls
Rudolf Bultmann, Faith and Understandingg, vol. 1 (New York: Harper
& Row, 1969), p. 55.
287 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
Jesus of Nazareth is the medium of the final revelation because he
sacrifices himself completely to Jesus as the Christ. He not only
sacrifices his l i f e , . . . but everything in him and of him . . . . 1 6
Pannenberg registers dissatisfaction with all of these Protestant variations on thè question-answer theme. He holds that these positions are
inadequate to explain the intrinsic relationship between man's question
and God's answer. He is also concerned about the possibility of connecting the question of human existence concretely with "the God of
whom Christian proclamation speaks."17
Reflecting on the presuppositions of human questioning, Pannenberg refers to man's "openness to the world" or self-transcendence, an
"idea about which there is such remarkable agreement among the most
diverse trends of modern thought." 18 In accord with the breadth of its
"angle of opening" every question projects possible answers. These
answers more or less satisfy the "powerful inner urge" which elicited
their formulation. As anticipatory projections these answers can be
understood partially as creations of the questioner. But the emergence
of the question itself can be accounted for only if the question is
viewed as "always framed only in association with the reality in
question." 19 Thus, Pannenberg avers that the presupposition of the
question is an "experience" of the reality in question.
In this essay ("The Question of God") Pannenberg proffers no
further development of the nature of this "experience" except to pose
the thesis that our experience of ourselves as personal results from our
long association with the eminently personal reality of the JudaeoChristian tradition. While this insight (which he shares with others) on
the derivation of our understanding of the personal quality of human
existence is both intriguing and enlightening, it seems to me that it is
tangential to Pannenberg's immediate concern. While it is most helpful
in connecting the human question with the biblical God, it is less
helpful in accounting for that universal divine immanence which
16
Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1951), p. 136.
17
Pannenberg, "The Question of God," p. 215.
1S
Ibid., p. 221.
19
Ibid., p. 225.
288
Convergence in Theological Anthropology
grounds human inquiry. The word, personal, leads us in the direction of
transcendence.
In a later article20 Pannenberg again emphasizes the need today for
a philosophical anthropology to establish "the assertion that when
man's being is fully aware, man is conscious that he is dependent upon
a reality which surpasses and sustains everything finite, and in this sense
is a divine reality." 21 He admits that this divine reality grounding all
finite being could be an illusion, even a necessary illusion for human
existence. No answer can be deduced from the conclusions of a philosophical anthropology, even though such an anthropology is a necessary
first step. 22
Beyond Barth's Christomonism, beyond Bultmann's negative natural
theology, beyond Tillich's question-answer correlation, Pannenberg has
indeed recognized the need for a more positive assessment of man's
fundamental "association with Mystery" for confronting today's Feuerbachian-Freudian type of atheism. To date, however, he has not developed a full philosophical account of man's "angle of openness." He has
spoken with both appreciation and reserve about the contributions of
Catholic theologians (especially Karl Rahner 23 ) to this critical area of
theological anthropology. To a consideration of some Catholic contributions we now turn.
20
Wolfhart Pannenberg, "Anthropology and the Question of God," in The
Idea of God and Human Freedom (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1973),
pp. 80-98.
21
Ibid., p. 95.
22
Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, "Toward a Theology of the History of Religions," in Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971),
pp. 65-118. After a philosophical anthropology has made its case for man's necessary association with a divine reality, "the reality of the mystery of being, to
which the structure of man's existence points, must be demonstrated in such
actual association with this mystery. In this sense, the reality of God or of divine
power can be proven only by its happening (Widerfahrnis), namely, in that it
proves itself powerful within the horizon of current experience of existence"
(p. 104, italics his). Note Pannenberg's extensive footnotes on K. Rahner's philosophy of religion, pp. 102-4.
23
Cf. Pannenberg, "Anthropology and the Question of God," p. 90.
289 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
CATHOLIC THEOLOGY: THE QUESTION IS "KNOWLEDGE"
A priori we would expect the Catholic theological tradition on
natural theology to provide a more congenial atmosphere for contemporary efforts to explore man's openness to the divine. Human nature
debilitated but not destroyed by the heritage of sin has been a characteristically Catholic theme throughout the modern period of polemical
theology. This human nature as such constituted man's basic openness
to God (the potentia obedientialis theme). In its doctrine on the natural
knowability of God Vatican I voiced official recognition of this tradition of respect for the relative autonomy of the order of creation.
Certain factors, however (among them, the hamartiological framework of Western nature-grace theology since the Augustinian-Pelagian
controversy with its consequent emphasis on the hypothetical necessity
and the factual gratuity of grace, together with the Scholastic distinction—and later separation-between the natural and the supernatural), led Catholic theologians to exaggerate the difference between
the two orders of creation and redemption. To avoid any indictment
for crypto-Pelagianism, because of its fundamentally positive assessment of the natural, and to eschew the new immanentist enthusiasm of
Modernism, Catholic theology came more and more to espouse an
"extrinsicist" position on the question of the relation between the
human and the divine.
Maurice Blondel
Rejecting this extrinsicism as a further form of alienation between
Catholicism and the best in the modern spirit, the philosopher, Maurice
Blondel, turned to an analysis of the human condition to provide
the philosophical prolegomena for Christian revelation. An apologetics
of immanence was the explicit intention of his anthropology:
If it is true that the exigencies of Revelation are well founded, then
it cannot be said that we are completely at home with ourselves; and
of this insufficiency, powerlessness, need, there must be some trace
in man, purely as man, and an echo of it even in the most autonomous philosophy. 24
2 4
Henri Bouillard, Blondel and Christianity (Washington: Corpus Books
1969), p. 18.
290
Convergence in Theological Anthropology
In his attempt to uncover the a priori for Christian revelation
Blondel set the trend for most of the major Catholic theologians of this
century. He constructed a critical analysis of the structure of human
existence to reveal man as a "question" and to show that in the experience of life man's questioning "openness" becomes "lack" becomes
"need."
Through his analysis of "action" Blondel proffered a phenomenology of the heart. There he located the innate disproportion, the fated
imbalance, the ultimate aporia which could make man a "useless
passion." Blondel described this ontological inadequacy in terms of a
distinction between the volonté voulante and the volonté voulue. The
former is man's insatiable elan, the latter his many choices always insufficient. Thus constituted, man must inquire whether or not he must
"will infinitely without willing the infinite
" 2 5 The suggestion of a
possible fulfillment of this determined structure of action evokes the
desire for "the absolutely necessary but the absolutely impracticable." 26 Thus, exigency and impotency describe the negative conditions for the genesis of the notion of the "supernatural." The quest is
ineluctable.
In the second movement of his apologetics of immanence Blondel
considers the Christian dogmas as hypothetical answers to the human
condition revealed through his analysis of action. He examines "from a
philosophical point of view, as hypotheses, the dogmas and practices of
Christianity in order to discover their intrinsic relations and their correspondence to the exigencies of the will." 7
The ruling hypothesis is that all men are affected "by a kind of
prevenient grace" which is "quite independent of all explicit revelation." 28 This "supernatural state" or better, perhaps, this "transnatural," is God's "original touch ab intrínseco which is complemented
by Christian revelation ab extrínseco.2
2s
Ibid., p. 64.
26
1 bid., p. 62.
21
Ibid., p. 93.
2%
Ibid„ p. 79.
29
Ibid., p. 87. On p. 89 is found the distinction Blondel makes between the
"supernatural state" and its consequent affirmation in the "supernatural life" of
grace.
291 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
In Christian terms, then, the source of man's infinite willing is "the
anonymous presence of an immanent supernatural."30 This immanence
of the divine is the prevenient grace which makes all human hearts
restless. Christian faith is its explicit acceptance, but even implicit fajth
can be the endorsement of its anonymous presence. It is indeed remarkable how this Catholic philosopher in his treatment of the Christian
"hypotheses" adumbrates and even anticipates the later "intrinsicist"
theology of Karl Rahner.
Karl Rahner
What Blondel accomplished through his exploration of action
Rahner achieves through his study of intellection. For Rahner the perennial task of theology is to elucidate the intrinsic connection between
revelation and its hearer, and consequently, the theologian's point of
departure most be a philosophical anthropology adequately expressive
of the structure of man's self-understanding.
While Blondel saw the dynamism of the will manifest in choosing,
Rahner sees the dynamism of mind evident in questioning. Toward a
philosophical account of the phenomenon of questioning as indicative
of the nature of man, the potential hearer of God, Rahner constructs
his "metaphysics of mind." This metaphysics cannot be "news from
nowhere." 31 It can only be the systematic objectification of what we
always already know in the actual performance and experience of
knowing anything at all.
The absolutely unknown or unknowable cannot be questioned.
Any inquiry signals the presence of some cognitional commerce with its
object. Since all questioning adumbrates the human question, the question of Being, Being must in some way be already "known" by its
questioner. Like Plato's Socrates, Rahner accounts for questioning by
claiming that we somehow know the answer.
This knowledge of Being, revealed in its question, is carefully distinguished by Rahner from conceptual, objective, thematic knowledge
(the ordinary sense of knowledge). Knowledge of Being is preconceptual, non-objective, and a-thematic. It is not given "for itself'
30
Ibid„ p. 91.
*Cf. William Shepherd, Man 'j Condition: God and the World Process (New
York: Herder & Herder, 1969), p. 106.
292
Convergence in Theological Anthropology
but only as the conditioning factor to ground the possibility of
knowing in the ordinary sense. Man is "spirit in-the-world"-his spiritual transcendence is for his history of freedom.
Ordinary, historical knowledge is not only the natural goal of the
transcendent horizon of the mind-but it mediates awareness of its
horizon by way of reflective scrutiny of its own presupposition. The
spirit's Vorgriff of esse "performs" only on the occasion of ordinary
sense-experience ; it brings sensation to intellection.
Rahner's philosophical investigation of the a priori structure of
consciousness terminates with an elaboration of his conclusions in the
form of theological prolegomena. As spirit in-the-world, man is that
being whose transcendence refers him to history as the place to await
either the speech or the silence of God. 33 Throughout his philosophical
movement Rahner cautiously refers to the "term" of man's spiritual
transcendence as Absolute Being or the "Whither" of spiritual dynamism.34 In his second or theological movement he expresses his
faith-valorization of the de facto gracious character of human transcendence whereby the Absolute or the "Whither" now become the
God of self-communicating grace. Spirit in-the-world becomes hearer of
the Word (de jure "natural transcendence" cedes to de facto "supernatural transcendence") when the immanence of Being becomes the
immanence of God. 35
The a priori activating immanence of God (as both orienting and
the orientation of human transcendence) as the conditioning factor of
the totality of man's self-performance provides the formal basis for
Rahner's understanding of the identity between theology and anthropology. The a posteriori material basis for this identification is Jesus
Christ, true God, true man. By way of extending his Christological
understanding of the immanence of the Transcendent in the finite to all
of reality (with man as its conscious apex) Rahner is able to envision all
Christian dogmas as different but complementary formulations of the
32
Cf. Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World (New York: Herder & Herder, 1968),
and Hearers of the Word (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969).
33
Cf. Rahner, Hearers of the Word, pp. 11 Iff.
34
Cf. Karl Rahner, "The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology," in
Theological Investigations, vol. 4 (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), pp. 48-60.
35
Ibid.
293 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
one Christian Mystery, grace, or the self-communication of the Uncreated to the created. 36
According to Christian teaching, this self-transcendence of the
cosmos in man towards its own totality and foundation . . . has
really reached its final consummation only when the cosmos in the
spiritual creature, its goal and its height, is not merely something set
apart from its foundation—something created-but something which
receives the ultimate self-communication of its ultimate ground
37
itself
Bernard Lonergan
No Christian thinker of our time has produced a more careful or a
more thorough philosophy of human subjectivity as a propaedeutic to
theology than Bernard Lonergan. Similar to Rahner in his concern to
elucidate the a priori structure of consciousness, Lonergan has constructed a more empirically satisfying and more critically nuanced
account of human knowing.
Questions for Lonergan are the manifestations of the "transcendental notions" by which he means that radical intentionality or basic
outreach which is the dynamism of the human spirit.38 These a priori,
unrestricted transcendentals are the differentiated dimensions of the
notion of being. These notions provide the dynamism for the movement by inquiry from experience to the intelligible, from the intelligible to the true and the real, from the true and the real to the
valuable and the good. The transcendental notions bespeak the heuristic
power of man's conscious intentionality, evidenced in every question
whereby he passes as a pilgrim between ignorance and knowledge
toward the fulfillment of his unrestricted eros for being.39
The question of God emerges as the question of questioning, when
we advert to the unlimited ambience of questioning as manifestive of
the unrestricted character of conscious intentionality. On each level of
36
Ibid„ pp. 60-73.
37
Rahner, "Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World," in
Theological Investigations, vol. 5 (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), p. 171.
38
For an explanation of the "transcendental notions" cf. B. Lonergan,
Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), chap. 1, pp. 3-25.
39
Cf. ibid.
294
Convergence in Theological Anthropology
the unfolding of conscious intentionality the question of God is evoked
in the search for the full significance of the insight of understanding, of
the achievement of judgment, and of the morality of decision. This
"transcendental tendency of the human spirit" is reflected in every
cultural anticipation of its answer, religious or irreligious.
The question of God, then, lies within man's horizon
The reach,
not of his attainment, but of his intending is unrestricted. There lies
within his horizon a region for the divine, a shrine for ultimate
holiness . . . negations presuppose the spark in our clod, our native
orientation to the divine.
The transcendental notions describe man's capacity for selftranscendence-intellectual, moral and finally, religious. But religious
self-transcendence, precisely because it is the experienced fulfillment of
the unrestricted eros of the human spirit in "the dynamic state of being
in love with God," 42 is beyond man's power. For the ultimate source
of the dynamism of conscious intentionality is God's initiative in his
"prior word" of love. 43 While Lonergan does not clearly distinguish
between God's "prior word" and the "state of being in love with God,"
it seems correct in our context to understand the "prior word" as
functionally identical with Rahner's notion of God's initiative in "transcendental revelation." Just as "transcendental revelation" is the experience of God's self-communicating grace for Rahner, so also for
Lonergan the "prior word pertains . . . to the unmediated experience of
the mystery of love and awe." 44
CONCLUSIONS
A brief review of some fundamental features of contemporary theological anthropology has revealed a significant thread of convergence
of Protestant and Catholic theologians around the theme of the "point
40
Cf. ibid.
41
Ibid., p. 103.
42
Ibid„ p. 106.
43
Ibid., p. 112.
44
Ibid.
295 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
of contact" between man and God. Despite the obvious differences in
perspective between both traditions a broad consensus can be ascertained from the fact that all modern theologians in some fashion contextualize their "speech about the divine" in terms of their explicit
evaluations of the condition of the human listener. The historical route
of Western theology has tended to make God more and more transcendent until finally transcendence becomes absence, and our world
thus secularized loses resonance with all talk of God. For us it is more
than ever the case that "there is no assured way leading from nature to
God, and . . . therefore, the whole burden of proof of the truth of faith
in God falls upon the understanding of man, upon anthropology.
But what is the appropriate assessment of any so-called "knowledge of God" uncovered by an analysis of man? Protestants and Catholics differ in their answers to this question, but perhaps these differences can be gauged more as complementary than as contradictory.
With varying degrees of emphasis Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich
eschew any direct path from man to knowledge of God. Because he is
blind to the real truth about himself, man on his own will only fashion
idols to suit his sinful proclivities. Thus Barth rejects any philosophy of
man as a source for Christian theology, since the truth about man is
unveiled only through God's action in Jesus Christ revealed in the Scriptures. He does, however, look with some relish on those existentialist
philosophies of man which portray in pessimistic tones the sorry plight
inherent in the human situation. Here he finds at least a "negative
source" for his Christian denunciation of human pretension. Bultmann,
indeed, goes further in embracing the philosophical categories of the
early Heidegger to establish a hermeneutic of self-understanding to
recast the New Testament message for today. But he replaces the
Heideggerian summons for self-affirmation with the self-surrendering
stance of Christian faith as the true way to authentic existence. In the
case of Tillich, the apologetic intent controlling his entire theology
leads him to a deep appreciation of existentialist philosophy as the
most apposite ally of contemporary theology: . . . the existentialist
raises the question and analyzes the human situation to which the
theologian can then give the answer.
That answer, of course, comes
Pannenberg, "Anthropology and the Question of God," p. 82.
46
Tillich, Theology of Culture, p. 125.
296
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neither from the situation nor from the question, but from "somewhere
else." 47
If Tillich advances beyond both Barth and Bultmann in connecting
the question with the answer, Pannenberg goes beyond Tillich in calling
for a more thorough philosophical justification for the thesis that man's
questionableness is rooted in his Weltoffenheit. He refers his readers to
the work of Catholic theologians in this area and presents his own
preliminary understanding of man's openness to the world as really
openness beyond the world experienced as dependence upon some transcendent power for fulfillment. A philosophy of subjectivity is absolutely necessary to provide a reasonable basis for the thesis that man
cannot be understood adequately without his having some "association" with the Mystery transcending empirical reality. 48 "If God
remains simply inaccessible to man, then religion becomes a selfcontradictory concept." The acceptance of Jesus and his authority
"already assumes a preliminary knowledge of God." 50 Thus, "an
awareness of God must already be assumed by Christian faith and is
prior to faith . . . ." 5 1 Over and over again Pannenberg underscores the
need for a fully developed anthropological prolegomenon for
theology—"the theology of revelation always implicitly assumes an
understanding of revelation and religion, that is, a philosophy of
religion."52
Now it seems to me that the at least partial fulfillment of this
theological exigency is the contribution of Catholic scholars such as
Blondel, Rahner, and Lonergan. While Catholic theology has much to
learn from the "Protestant principle" and its ally, existentialist philosophy, for a more profound insight into the concrete plight of man
47
/Wd.
48
Cf. Pannenberg, "Toward a Theology of the History of Religions,"
p. 102.
49
Pannenberg, "Anthropology and the Question of God," pp. 94-5.
50
Pannenberg, "Speaking about God in the Face of Atheist Criticism," in
The Idea of God and Human Freedom, p. 103.
51
52
Ibid., p. 104.
Pannenberg, "Christian Theology and Philosophical Criticism," in The
Idea of God and Human Freedom, p. 121.
297 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
experiencing his "infinite qualitative distance" from God, the Catholic
tradition can complement this understanding by retrieving its characteristic optimism regarding human "nature." Both perspectives are necessary to preserve the paradox of God's "No!" in Christ to man's selfmade condition of ambiguity manifested in the totality of its cultural
pretensions, and God's "Yes!" in Christ to the fulfillment of the human
potential which is the realization of the divine intention of the imago
Dei. The Protestant principle must be supplemented by Catholic substance. And, in terms of our theme, the existentialist portrayal of the
concrete questionableness of the human condition must be completed
by a philosophical anthropology to uncover the conditions for the possibility of the emergence and performance of man, the question.
For Blondel the "idea" of God is necessarily evoked by the movement of life. This "knowledge of God," generated by the experienced
disproportion between finite achievement and infinite elan, is implicit
in all men. The being of God, however, transcends this "idea" of him
necessarily evoked by experience. Only through the religious option
(faith) will true knowledge of the divine be attained. For the mind is
not equal to the task of moving beyond the ineluctable affirmation that
God is. Knowledge of what God is demands from man the selfsurrendering option for a totally dedicated love by which he comes to
understand that to grasp the Infinite, to possess God, is really to be
grasped and to be possessed by him.
For Rahner the pre-conceptual awareness of God as the conditioning horizon for man's knowing and willing is the most primordial
knowledge of God. It is primordial because it is that necessary commerce with the divine which is constitutive for the historical unfolding
in freedom of the human spirit. This knowledge, again, is not knowledge in the ordinary (categorial) sense. Moreover, this knowledge of
itself is insufficient to account for or to sustain the actual history of
man in his quest for God-it cannot ground the possibility of faith. For
Rahrier this merely "natural" knowledge of God must cede in the
actual, historical situation to the presence of the Mystery of love so
that no man experiences merely the "Absolute" but all men really
experience the self-giving God. De facto, the most primordial knowledge of God is "transcendental revelation."
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Convergence in Theological Anthropology
Expressed in Catholic terms, this doctrine of the transcendental
necessity of the priority of the experience of God and its necessary
expression in explicit speaking about God (with all the dangers of
conceptual idolatry) refers to a knowledge which is both transcendental and unavoidable and is always sustained by the offer of
God's self-communication in grace. Consequently, the doctrine of
the natural knowability and knowledge of God is not a knowledge
which appears in isolation, but one element, only subsequently
isolated, in a single knowledge of God, authorized by him in its
direct relation to him, which, when it is accepted, is already faith. 5 3
By his notion of transcendental revelation Rahner is able to
provide the needed focus on the immanence of God as the graceful
basis for (because ultimate answer to) the question of man. Man's question is a "point of contact" because it is derived from the always
already present self-giving Mystery who is its answer. The question is
the echo of the call.
Like Rahner, Lonergan has cleared the space or found the room for
the divine immanence through his transcendental philosophy. Conscious intentionality finds its ultimate fulfillment in being in love with
God, that dynamic state initiated by God's "prior word."
Different from Rahner, Lonergan denies that the immanent
Mystery is "known." The dynamic state is conscious and thus experienced but not known—for knowledge is a "compound of experience,
understanding, and judging." 54 God's flooding of our hearts with his
love effects that dynamic state which "of itself is operative
grace . . . , " s s This dynamic state is experienced in the fulfillment of
our capacity for moral self-transcendence as "deep joy and profound
peace." It is the task of the Christian apologist to assist us to "know
what is going on within us" so that we might "integrate it with the rest
of our living."57 It seems apposite, in terms of our theme, to note that
53
Rahner, "Observations on the Doctrine of God in Catholic Dogmatics,"
in Theological Investigations, vol. 9 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972),
pp. 135-6.
54
Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 106.
ss
Ibid., p. 107.
56
Ibid., p. 122.
sl
Ibid.
299 Convergence in Theological Anthropology
Lonergan considers his approach to have greatly reduced the problem
of the salvation of non-Christians.
We began with Plato's paradoxical account of the experience of
inquiry—questioning is both not knowing and knowing. Hopefully, we
have established a case for the complementarity of the different positions of Protestant and Catholic theologians on the connection between
the question of God and the knowledge of God. Protestants rightfully
insist on the priority of the divine answer, which they find in categorial
clarity in Christian revelation. Catholics share this insistence on the
priority of the answer, but they find it in the transcendental presence of
the divine immanence.
The divergence of the two basic tendencies preserves the Platonic
paradox. We question God; therefore, we do not know him but we do
know him!
MICHAEL J. SCANLON, 0 . S. A.
Washington Theological Coalition